I recently discovered, to my great surprise, that the "Graphic View" monorail not only is shorter than the one used on the "View II," but also is wider. Thus, if someone has transplanted a "Graphic View" onto the pan/tilt head supplied for a "View II," the hinged retaining clamp will not seat properly on the support block of the newer head.

It may be that I am the only Graflex enthusiast in the Western Hemisphere who did not know this. Still, it may be worth adding to the record of things that are and are not interchangeable between the two models.

That's very interesting news! I just took it for granted that they were exactly the same. If I can ever get into the boxes where I 'temporarily' stored many of my cameras, I'll check myself to see the difference...

I suppose I'm lucky. A while back, I bought a GVII rail and bellows to repair my GVI which has a terrible bellows. _Unfortunately_, the person decided he was to lazy to disassemble his camera and wound up sending me the complete GVII instead... I decided not to disassemble it either So I didn't find out whether or not the rails were interchangable...

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"Ya just can't have too many GVIIs"
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My old "View II" is at home while the "View," acquired earlier this year, is in the office, so I haven't been able to lay the rails side by side and measure them with an accurate instrument. Using a steel ruler and an imperfectly calibrated eyeball, it looks to me as though the two sloped faces of the "View II" rail -- sides A and B of the triangle -- are rather less than 1/16 inch shorter than those on the rail of the original "View." Therefore the base, side C, hypotenuse, is a bit narrower too.

As I received it, the "View" is mounted on a head pretty much identical to the one that came with my "View II" (which I bought, used, about 30 years ago). The difference is that it has handsome lettering with patent information imprinted on it, while the other one is blank. However, the swinging clamp cannot close down flush with the rail bed, which led me to discover that the original "View" rail is a tad larger in cross-section than the "View II" rail. This is not a disabling fault, as it does lock securely, but it is annoying.

It appears to me that milling two shallow grooves in the "View II" mount's rail bed would solve the problem. I don't think this would be especially difficult to do, but it would be tedious.

I've been tempted for years to make a simple tripod block with a screw-down clamp holding the rail to it. I ran across a description of such a thing on the Internet a couple of months ago, but it was pricey. With a little thought, I should be able to come up with something that can accommodate either rail, perhaps by means of a removable shim on the bed.